MEQUON, Wis. – The Rockford Rivets (0-1) were on the wrong end of another brutal blowout, losing 21-6 to the Lakeshore Chinooks (1-0) at Kapco Park Wednesday night. It was the first game of the second half of the Northwoods League season.
Despite losing by 15 runs, the Rivets actually scored first in the game. Hunter Feduccia’s (LSU) RBI single and Neal Tyrell’s (Lewis) sacrifice fly to center field put the Rivets up 2-0. The Chinooks answered, however, with two runs of their own, to make it a 2-2 game after the first inning.
Down 4-2 in the third inning, Feduccia hit an RBI double to right field and Tyrell added another sac fly to center, to tie the game, 4-4. The Chinooks scored three runs in the third to take a 7-4 lead, keeping the early back-and-forth scoring going.
An RBI single in the fourth off the bat of Brian Klein (Texas Tech) made it a 7-5 ball game, but what could have been a big inning ended when Ryan Hutchinson (Illinois State) lined into a triple play. Klein then belted a solo home run to right-center field leading off the seventh, his first homer of the season, to cut the Chinooks lead to 7-6, but that’s as close as the game would get from there on.
Lakeshore hit the cover off the ball in the late innings, scoring four runs in the seventh and a whopping 10 runs in the eighth, sending 16 batters to the plate in the inning. Owen Miller (Illinois State) hit for the cycle for the second time in three games, and finished the night 5 for 5 with a two-run home run, a triple, a double, two singles and a walk. Miller collected six RBI and also scored four runs.
Jeffrey Barton (Illinois State) started the game for the Rivets and went four innings, allowing seven runs, and took the loss. He also stuck out four batters. Marshall Oetting (Concordia-Ann Arbor) started for the Chinooks and pitched just three innings. Alex McIntosh (UW-Milwaukee) got the win for Lakeshore, throwing two innings in relief.
The Rivets have now lost four straight games and are 1-2 against Lakeshore this season. Game 2 of this series will be played in Rockford tomorrow at 6:35 p.m.
The Rockford Rivets are a member of the finest developmental league for elite college baseball players, the Northwoods League, which will play its 24th season of summer collegiate baseball in 2017. The Northwoods League is the largest organized baseball league in the world with 20 teams, drawing significantly more fans, in a friendly ballpark experience, than any league of its kind. A valuable training ground for coaches, umpires and front office staff, 160 Northwoods League players have advanced to Major League Baseball, including two-time Cy Young Award winner Max Scherzer (Washington Nationals), two-time World Champion Ben Zobrist (Chicago Cubs) and MLB All-Stars Chris Sale (Boston Red Sox), Jordan Zimmermann (Detroit Tigers), Curtis Granderson (New York Mets) and Lucas Duda (Mets). All league games are viewable live via the Northwoods League Website, NorthwoodsLeague.com.
